The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 16

Staring at the faint gleam of light far down the tunnel he'd discovered at the top of the shaft, Jeff felt a surge of hope that it would quickly guide them to the surface. Though his instincts urged him to run toward the light, to escape from the palpable blackness around him, he forced himself to wait until Jagger, too, had climbed the rusty rungs and emerged from the shaft like some subterranean creature creeping from its burrow. As Jagger hauled himself out of the shaft, Jeff started toward the light, his pulse racing. But when the two of them reached the source of the light, Jeff's hope was dashed: it wasn't coming from above, but from below.

Standing on opposite sides of the shaft, they gazed into its depths. Perhaps thirty feet down they could see the floor of another tunnel, and it was from there that the light emanated, seeping up the shaft-a beacon of hope as false as that of the signal lights pirates once placed on Caribbean beaches at night to draw ships onto the reefs. They peered down at the light for a long time, saying nothing.

Even had there been a ladder, neither of them would willingly have descended it. Finally, Jagger broke the silence: "We can't get out just by standing here."

Nodding, Jeff shined his light into the darkness that lay in both directions.

There was nothing, no hint as to what might lie beyond the blackness, nor how long it might be before they found another light. Out of this uncertainty, they remained close to the light source, like moths hypnotized by a lightbulb, until Jagger spun around and lunged into the darkness with a growl that fell just short of being a howl of anguish. "We gotta get out of here. Now!"

Jeff, now more terrified of being alone than of the dark, stumbled after him. They moved as quickly as they could, still using only one of the flashlights, until they came to an intersection with another tunnel, this one filled with what looked to Jeff like electrical cables. Jagger had stopped abruptly. "Which way?" he asked.

In every direction there was nothing more than the terrible blackness. Jeff turned to his right. Jagger, not questioning his decision, followed him as blindly as he'd followed Jagger a little while ago.

The tunnel seemed to be narrowing, and though Jeff told himself it had to be an illusion, he was starting to feel the terrible claustrophobia that had gripped him in the shaft.

The tunnel itself seemed to be crushing him, and he felt a scream rising in his throat. But just as his howl was about to erupt, Jagger's enormous hand closed on his shoulder, and the solid grip somehow eased the sharp talons of panic that had been sinking deep into his mind.

"Somethin‘ up ahead," Jagger whispered in his ear, his lips so close that Jeff could feel the other man's breath.

"Where?" Jeff asked, matching Jagger's barely audible tone.

Jagger's hand went over his mouth. "Sshhh…" he cautioned, clicking off his flashlight and plunging them into blackness. The pounding of Jeff's heart sounded like drums in his own ears, then Jagger whispered again. "Can't you hear it?"

Jeff willed his heartbeat to slow, and very dimly it came to him.

A whimpering sound, like an injured dog might make.

Jagger edged around Jeff. "Let me go first," he whispered.

They advanced carefully, Jagger flicking the light on just long enough to be certain he wasn't about to stumble into an unseen shaft.

The whimpering grew louder.

They came to yet another intersection, and now the whimpering was clear.

Not a dog.

A human.

It was coming from the left, and Jagger turned the light back on and played its beam into the darkness.

The whimpering fell silent.

At first there seemed to be nothing there but a pile of rubbish, a heap of filthy rags. Then the light glinted off a pair of eyes and an anguished moan came from the mound of rags.

Jagger inched forward with Jeff right behind him until they were standing over the rags. Jagger kicked one of them aside with the toe of his shoe.

A man's face, twisted into a mask of pure terror, peered up at them, his clawlike hands scratching at the floor of the tunnel as if he were trying to burrow into the cold concrete itself. As Jagger crouched down beside him, he cowered against the wall, clutching a ragged blanket to his belly. "Get away," he whispered. "Get away before they find you, too!"

"Who?" Jeff asked, crouching down and peering into the man's face. Though he'd thought at first that the man was much older, now he saw that he couldn't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His hair was tangled and matted, and his face was smeared with dirt and grease. "Before who can find us?"

The man's eyes rolled first one way and then the other, and for a moment Jeff thought he hadn't heard him. But then the man's jaw began working, and a dribble of blood ran down his chin. "Hunters," he whispered. "I thought I was safe. I thought I…" His voice trailed off and he lay against the wall, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. Then, his words cracking like shards of glass, he said, "Can't get away. They said it was a game… said I could win. All I had to do was… was…"

He fell silent again, and Jeff heard something else. Another voice, softly echoing off the walls of the tunnel.

"Here-look at this. He went this way."

The man's eyes widened as he, too, heard the voice, and once again he seemed to want to speak. His body went rigid and a strangled gurgle came from his lips. Then, abruptly, he relaxed. His hands, still clutching at the rags, fell away from his belly.

The blood oozing from the hole in the man's stomach glistened crimson in the beam of the flashlight.

As the sound of voices grew closer, Jeff and Jagger plunged back into the darkness.

It was the kind of evening that was perfect for walking. The icy chill of winter had given way to spring, and there was a faint scent of new flowers drifting from the park. It was the kind of evening, in fact, that had often enticed Jeff and Heather out for one of their hours-long rambles, Jeff soaking up the architecture while Heather regaled him with stories of what it was like growing up as a poor little rich girl in the heart of Manhattan. Perhaps it was the perfect weather that kept Heather walking that evening.

Or perhaps it was the fact that there wasn't any place she wanted to be.

Certainly, she did not want to be anywhere near her father!

Pain-pain and anger-boiled up inside her as she remembered what he'd said after he gave her the news that Jeff had died. He'd put his arms around her and spoken words that, even in her anger, she assumed he must have thought were comforting: "I know you're upset, sweetheart, but you'll get over it. There will be other men, and in the long run I think you'll come to understand that this has saved you from a lot of grief."

And tonight he'd asked her to go to Le Cirque! Had he really thought she'd be able to sit in a restaurant where she not only knew most of the customers, but would have to put up with them acting as if nothing were wrong? After all, most of the people she'd grown up with had made it perfectly clear what they thought of Jeff Converse. "He'll never really understand you, darling," Jessica van Rensellier had told her a couple of years ago. "Fine for a summer romance, of course, but he's just not someone you could get serious about, is he? I mean, isn't his father one of those men who take care of our houses?"

For the last year, Heather had gotten the impression that Jessica and the rest of the people she'd grown up with were trying to avoid her, and she discovered she didn't mind-the people she was meeting through Jeff were a lot more interesting than the Le Cirque crowd had ever been. Carolyn was even worse than the people who had once been her friends. She had managed to not even mention Jeff's name in the last two days.

So Heather kept walking, heading away from the East Side, where she was all too likely to run into someone she knew from high school, someone coming home from a Junior League or DAR meeting. She wandered toward the West Side, but not until she found herself on Broadway, three short blocks from Jeff's building, did she realize exactly where she'd taken herself.

She almost turned away, almost hailed a cab to take her back home, when she paused, recalling Jeff's words as he'd told her where they were going: "We'll know when we get there."

Had he been leading her tonight? Was that why she'd walked all the way across town and fifty blocks north? She shook her head hard, as if to rid herself of the thought, then flushed as a passerby gave her a funny look and turned away-the same kind of look she sometimes gave one of the crazy people on the streets.

But they actually think they hear voices, she reassured herself. I'm only remembering what Jeff always said.

Yet even knowing it was only her recollection, Heather didn't raise her hand to hail a cab, though half a dozen of them were prowling the street, starved for fares, thanks to the perfect weather. Instead she gave in to an urge to walk the final three blocks and see the dark windows of Jeff's apartment.

Except that tonight his windows weren't dark, and as she gazed up at them a few minutes later-as she always had when she knew Jeff was waiting for her-she saw him standing just as he had always stood, looking down at her. Her heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be! It wasn't possible! Jeff was dead! Confused, knowing what she'd seen was impossible, she glanced around as if in search of someone who might have been playing tricks on her.

When she finally trusted herself to look back up at the window, the figure was gone.

But the window was still lit.

Who could it be?

The super? The moment the thought came to her, she knew that had to be the explanation. She could almost see the building superintendent, Wally Crosley-"Crawly Wally," Jeff had always called him-creeping around Jeff's apartment, helping himself to whatever he thought might be worth something. Her hand went into her purse and she felt for the keys she hadn't used in so long. They were still there. A few seconds later she was climbing the half-dozen steps to the building's door. She let herself in.

When she came to the third floor landing, she hesitated. What if it wasn't the super? she wondered. What if it was someone else?

She glanced down the hallway toward the back of the building. A light showed under the door across from Jeff's, which meant that Tommy Adams was home. She considered ringing his bell before she rang Jeff's. At least then she wouldn't have to face Crosley alone.

Heather was just reaching for Tommy's buzzer when Jeff's own door opened. But it wasn't Wally Crosley who stood there.

It was Keith Converse, and it seemed to Heather that he'd been drinking. His face was flushed, and his eyes didn't look quite focused. "It was you," he said. Then, to clarify, he added: "Down in the street just now."

Heather nodded. "I-I was just out walking."

Keith's brows lifted. "All the way over here from Fifth?"

Part of Heather wanted to leave. She'd heard about how Jeff's father could get when he was drinking, and if he started blaming her for what had happened to Jeff-

"I don't know why I got up and went to the window," he said. "I was just sitting in Jeff's chair, trying to think, and…" His voice trailed off, but then he pulled the door open wider. "Something just made me go look. Maybe I was looking for Jeff."

Heather's eyes blurred with tears. "I know," she whispered. "When I went out tonight, I didn't even know where I was going. He always told me we'd know where we were going when we got there." She shook her head, as her hand tightened on the key she was still holding. "But he's not here. He's…" Her voice trailed off, too, as she found herself unable to speak the words.

"He's not, Heather," Keith said quietly. She looked up at him, started to speak, was about to argue with him, but he held up his hand, silencing her. "Just listen to me, all right? No one else will. Everyone else thinks I'm nuts. But I talked to a man this morning. A man who saw Jeff yesterday." Heather frowned, said nothing, but didn't turn away. "He saw Jeff get out of the van after the crash."

Heather's breath caught in her throat, and when Keith held the door still wider, she stepped through it.

Eve Harris automatically glanced at her watch as she crossed Columbus Circle and saw the black car with official license plates already sitting in front of the Trump International. There were people you kept waiting and people you didn't, even if you were on the City Council. Carey Atkinson and Arch Cranston were two of the people you didn't. Chief of Police Atkinson and Deputy Police Commissioner Cranston, whose mostly ceremonial job had been bought with some of the largest soft-money political contributions in the history of the city, definitely ranked as people she should be on time for. So it was nine p.m. on the dot-exactly the time they'd arranged-when she walked through the front door, turned left, and entered the foyer outside the restaurant.

"I can show you right in, Ms. Harris," the maitre d‘ said, tipping his head just enough to be respectful without sinking into servility. "The gentlemen are already here." Even though she wasn't late, Eve made a silent bet with herself that Cranston would make a stupid remark about the unpunctuality of women. Smiling, she followed the maitre d' through the second set of doors into the restaurant-an elegantly simple room, and expensive enough that there was no need to crowd the tables close together. All the tables offered a degree of privacy unknown in most of the city's restaurants, but the headwaiter led her to a table at the rear of the room-away from the windows that Atkinson considered a security risk, and from the doors that admitted a blast of wind every time they were opened. Eve was more than willing to give up the view of Central Park to escape the draft, and, like the men, she preferred the privacy of the area behind the bar.

"That's what I love about you," Arch Cranston said, leaning over to kiss Eve's cheek and ignoring her attempt to turn her head away. "You're always on time-not like other women!"

Eve silently credited her mental gambling account with a five dollar win. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Arch," she replied, covering her annoyance at his cliché with one of her own. Arch, dependably, had no clue he was being mocked, but Carey Atkinson winked at her as they all sat down.

"So what's it going to be?" Atkinson asked as he signaled the waiter. "Are we going to pretend to be civilized and make small talk, or shall we get right to it?"

"I've never pretended to be civilized," Eve replied. "That's how I keep my seat. But I hear all kinds of things, and right now I'm hearing some very strange things about the young man who died in the Corrections transport van yesterday morning."

The two men glanced at each other, and while Cranston shifted uneasily in his seat, Atkinson leaned forward and asked, "Just what is it you're hearing, Eve?"

She could see by their expressions that they knew exactly what she was talking about, but she'd been in politics long enough to know when a charade needed to be played out. "I happened to run into Jeff Converse's father this afternoon," she said. "It seems he doesn't believe his son is dead."

Atkinson visibly relaxed. "Keith Converse seems to have been getting around today. How did he get to your office?"

"He didn't. I met him in the subway." As briefly as she could, Eve told them what had happened. When she was finished, neither Arch Cranston or Carey Atkinson said anything, and as the silence lengthened, Eve went on: "I also heard that the man he talked to-whose name was Al Kelly- is dead. Stabbed in an alley, apparently so he could be relieved of the five dollars Mr. Converse gave him for telling him about the wreck."

"So Al Kelly was the drunk?" Arch Cranston said.

"Al Kelly had a drinking problem, yes," Eve replied. "Many of the homeless do." Her eyes fixed on Carey Atkinson. "I'm assuming your department won't be able to find out who killed Al Kelly?"

Atkinson shrugged, spreading his hands helplessly. "You know as well as I do that we don't have the manpower to investigate every derelict who gets himself killed in this city."

"You'd find the manpower if you cared as much about the problems of the homeless as I do." Eve shifted her gaze to Arch Cranston. "Which brings us around to the other reason we're here tonight, doesn't it? I didn't see you at the benefit for Montrose House last night." Her eyes flicked back to the police chief. "I didn't expect to see you."

Cranston reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a thick envelope, which Eve eyed warily. "It's for Monsignor McGuire."

"Then send it to him," Eve said, making no move at all to pick up the envelope. "What I'm more concerned about is the way the department is hassling our people." Her eyes went back to the police chief. "How is it that you don't have the manpower to find out who kills homeless people, but you always have the manpower to run them off the streets?"

Atkinson shook his head impatiently. "There aren't that many of them-" he began, but Eve didn't let him finish.

"There are probably fifty thousand people living either on or under the streets of this city, and you know it."

Atkinson shook his head doggedly. "There aren't more than a tenth that number."

Eve didn't bother to respond. Both of them were aware of the fact that he knew better. The waiter arrived to take their order, and when he left, she returned to the subject of Jeff Converse. "I told the father I'd look into it," she said. "Obviously, I'm not going to be able to talk to Al Kelly to ask him what he saw myself, so I'm asking you two-is it possible that what Al Kelly told Mr. Converse could have happened? If I tell him you're positive his son is dead, is he going to be able to prove me wrong?"

Atkinson shook his head. "Converse made enough of a stink at the M.E.‘s office that I heard about it, and I also heard from Wilkerson, the captain over at the Fifth Precinct. Mr. Converse was in there this morning, too, wanting to see the report on the accident."

"And he saw it?" Eve asked.

Atkinson shook his head. "In the end, he decided he didn't have to. He talked to the officers who caught the call."

"Then that's it?" Eve asked.

"That's it," Arch Cranston assured her. "If Converse actually comes back to you, you can tell him there was no mistake-his son died in the fire." He shook his head with the exaggerated sadness that comes so naturally to politicians. "A terrible thing-no matter what the boy did, I wouldn't wish that kind of death on him."

Eve Harris raised her brow but said nothing about Arch Cranston's transparent insincerity. Instead, she returned to the subject, and the name Keith Converse had mentioned.

"There was also a man called Scratch. According to Keith Converse, this Scratch led his son into the subway." She pinned Atkinson to his chair with her dark eyes. "It would seem to me that if he exists, someone at least ought to talk to him. Do I need to talk to Wilkerson about that myself?"

Atkinson sighed heavily. "No, Eve. I'll have someone call the Fifth in the morning-hell, maybe I'll even do it tonight. But if this guy lives in the tunnels, don't count on my men finding him."

This time Eve made no attempt to keep the mocking gleam from showing in her eyes. "Oh, heavens no, Carey. I certainly wouldn't expect New York's Finest to risk their lives down in those terrible tunnels. After all, they might get beaten up by a gang of rampaging homeless single mothers, wielding their fatherless babies! Wouldn't want New York's Finest to have to risk their lives against that, would we?"

Carey Atkinson chose to ignore her words, but Arch Cranston, his eyes flicking around the room in order to gauge the number of people who might have heard Eve's outburst, did not.

"Come on, Eve," he said, loudly enough for the woman listening from the next table to hear it as clearly as she'd heard Eve Harris. "Give Carey a break. You know what kind of people live in the tunnels. Hell, you probably know better than any of us. And you know what it's like down there."

Eve's lips smiled, but her eyes did not. "We all know what it's like down there," she said. "And we all know what goes on. But sometimes I think I'm the only one in this whole city who actually wants to do something about it. The rest of you just want to-" She cut herself short, knowing she was starting to sound like a broken record. Besides, each person at the table knew perfectly well what the others wanted.

They also knew that people in their positions never discussed their true desires in public.

The truth, always, was reserved for intimate conversations in the most private of settings.

And that was a rule that even Eve Harris believed in keeping.